A Nightmare in the Matrix
by Random Phantasm
Summary: Terrorized by the dream-haunting ghost of Freddy Krueger, a trio of teenagers try to bring Freddy into what they believe is reality. Once in the dreamworld of the Matrix, everyone inside it from its human prisoners to the Agents become Freddy's children.
1. The Nightmare Begins

A Nightmare in the Matrix By Andrew Ohning Based on characters created by Wes Craven and the Wachowski brothers.  
  
Zagan ran like mad. He could still hear the.whatever-the-hell-it-was cackling in the distance behind him. Every shadow around him seemed to take on the form of the fiend's clawed hand. Such surreal things kept happening that Zagan began to wonder if this was perhaps some new kind of Upgrade.As he rounded the corner at the end of the street, he glanced absently up at the street sign. The sight stopped him in his tracks. Somehow he was back at the other end of the street.  
  
"Hell no," he said under his breath. He pulled his phone out and dialed his operator. The line clicked as the other end was picked up. "Moloch, get me the hell out of-"  
  
"There is no 'out' anymore," crowed the voice of the whatever-the-hell-it- was over the line.  
  
Zagan threw the phone aside and started to run again. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the phone was melting into the pavement. From the puddle of black rose the whatever-the-hell-it-was, laughing. Zagan turned back and suddenly found himself inside a house.  
  
"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted.  
  
"I'll tell you," the fiend's voice growled behind him. Zagan turned around to stare straight into the wild green eyes of the monster's burn-scarred face. "You're one of my children now."  
  
There was a flash of light on metal and a tearing pain in Zagan's chest, and then there was nothing.  
  
***  
  
"Where is he, Moloch?" Maegera demanded. Zagan had been missing in the Matrix for almost an hour. Moloch spent that hour running a search for him, but found no trace. The only thing that gave them any clue as to how Zagan was doing was his bio-monitors. Zagan's heart rate was elevated, as was his breathing. All of a sudden, Zagan jerked in his chair, and his bio-monitor started screeching warnings. Maegera rushed over to him when four deep gashes suddenly opened up in his chest. It was if a quartet of invisible razors had just dug their way into Zagan's body. Needless to say, Zagan's heart stopped and he was gone.  
  
"What the hell did this?" Maegera said. She'd seen dozes of people die in the Matrix, but never had she seen the injuries manifest in reality. Moloch still never managed to find Zagan in the Matrix.What was happening?  
  
***One Week Earlier in the Matrix***  
  
Sandra Glistan woke with a start. It was still nighttime and she'd had the nightmare again. The same hideously burn-scarred man with the same clawed glove in the same dark boiler room. She'd told her parents about the nightmares. They suggested that it was stress. Sandra, however, could sense that they were keeping something from her. Her friends had been having similar nightmares.  
  
At school that morning, Sandra told her friend Christa about her latest nightmare.  
  
"I had another one too," Christa said. "Only there was also a little girl singing a jump rope rhyme or something. I can't remember all of it.One, two.someone's coming for you."  
  
"Freddy," said Shawn as he walked up to them. "I heard it too. 'One, two, Freddy's coming for you.' There were three little girls jumping rope and singing outside the old abandoned house on Elm Street. Y'know, 1428."  
  
"Man, I had the weirdest dream last night," Burton said walking up to them. "Some nut with knives for fingers was chasing me around a boiler room while some little girls were singing something about crucifixes and never sleeping again."  
  
"You too?" Christa said.  
  
"What do you mean, me too?"  
  
"We've all been having nightmares about the same guy," Sandra said.  
  
"What does that mean?" said Shawn.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Hey, wait a minute. Has anyone seen Michelle?" Christa said.  
  
Before anyone could answer, a teacher hollered at them from down the hall to get to class. The friends separated and went off to their classes. Sandra walked past the teacher's lounge on her way to class. She heard scared and hushed voices talking within.  
  
"Did they tell you about that Michelle Anstrol girl?" one voice said.  
  
"Yeah, her parents found her cut to ribbons in her bed this morning," the other voice replied. "Do you suppose it could be Krue-"  
  
"Shut up!" the first voice snapped. "Don't even say his name."  
  
"Sorry. You know, Bill Glistan told me his daughter's been having strange nightmares."  
  
The first voice sighed. "I pray to God it's not him. Just the same, don't breathe a word about this to any students."  
  
"Right."  
  
Sandra hurried on to class so as not to be caught eavesdropping. Michelle was dead? What was happening?  
  
***Five Days Later***  
  
The body count had reached two dozen. All those dead were children that had fallen asleep. Those who were still alive were staying awake by any means necessary. The parents had, on the most part, come clean with the children about the child murderer Fred Krueger. It was growing ever more dangerous for the kids to stay awake with caffeine pills and the like.  
  
Springville's mayor Rupert Brigandi was overwhelmed with the stress of the situation. The town refused to seek help from outside agencies, but keeping so many deaths under wraps was going to be hard. Now that Krueger had a hold of the children, there was no place they could sleep safely. Suddenly, Brigandi's secretary entered his office.  
  
"Mayor Brigandi," she said, "there's someone here to see you."  
  
"Send him in," Brigandi replied.  
  
"But sir, he-"  
  
"I said send him in."  
  
The secretary nodded and stepped out. A moment later, balding man in a black suit with sunglasses and a radio earpiece stepped in. He took a seat in front of Brigandi's desk.  
  
"Welcome to Springville," Brigandi said. "How can I help you mister."  
  
"Erickson, Agent Erickson," the man said. "We've received reports of numerous mysterious deaths in the area."  
  
"How.Strange deaths? What strange deaths?"  
  
"Do not attempt to feign ignorance, Brigandi. At least twenty four persons have died in Springville in the last week. All of them were children, and all of them were asleep when they died."  
  
"I'm afraid I don't-"  
  
"I told you not to pretend not to know what I'm talking about. If you withhold any information that may be of use to our investigation-"  
  
"How could you possibly know all this?" Brigandi shouted, standing up. "No one outside of this town has ever been told! Not ever!"  
  
"How we know is not important," Erickson said. "What is important is that we bring an end to this."  
  
"You don't understand," Brigandi sighed, returning to his seat. "You can't stop him. Never. Every time he comes back, they try to stop him. Sometimes they do, but he always finds a way back." Brigandi opened a drawer in his desk and reached inside.  
  
"Who?" the Agent asked. "Who can't be stopped? What are you talking about?"  
  
"One, two Freddy's coming for you." Brigandi's eyes stared blankly through Erickson. "Nine, ten." He pulled a pistol from the drawer and put it under his chin. "Never sleep again."  
  
"No!" Erickson shouted.  
  
Brigandi pulled the trigger before Erickson could try to stop him.  
  
***  
  
Burton wandered through the darkened house. How did he get here? I the last few days, his lack of sleep made it hard to keep his thoughts straight, but this was ridiculous. He suddenly recognized where he was. It was the old abandoned house on Elm Street. Lots of kids went there on dares, but it was mostly a nice, secluded, if slightly foreboding, make-out spot. Now knowing that all this Freddy business had started in 1428 Elm, this was the last place he wanted to be. He suddenly heard Freddy's sinister laughter echo through the empty house.  
  
"Oh shit," Burton said, "I fell asleep!" He ran for the door but didn't make any ground. He suddenly felt a hand grab the back of his head and four metal blades along the top of his scalp. "No!"  
  
Freddy's hand squeezed and Burton's head caved in like an overripe melon.  
  
***  
  
Burton was dead. Sandra had walked into the room just as Freddy killed him. She'd turned to run and found herself in the boiler room. When Freddy sprang out from behind some pipes, she'd gotten her hands on his hat and fallen back onto some hot pipes. The pain woke her up. Sandra showed the hat to Christa and Shawn who were both shocked to see it.  
  
"How?" Christa gasped.  
  
"I had a hold of his hat when I woke up, and there it was," Sandra said.  
  
"Maybe we can beat him then," Shawn said.  
  
"What are you talking about?" said Sandra.  
  
"Look, you brought the hat out of your dream, right?"  
  
Sandra nodded.  
  
"Here's what we do," Shawn explained. "One of us goes to sleep and gets a hold of him. When the rest of us see them struggling, we wake them up."  
  
"Freddy becomes real, and we can kill him," Christa said.  
  
"Then it'll be over," Sandra said.  
  
They all agreed. They would draw lots for who was going to sleep. This was going to work. It just had to.  
  
***The Next Night***  
  
Sandra drew the short straw; she was the one who was going to sleep. Shawn had his dad's shotgun loaded and ready. Despite her fear, four days without sleep made it fairly easy for Sandra to fall asleep. Shawn and Christa waited patiently for the right moment to wake her up.  
  
In her dream, Sandra found herself in Freddy's boiler room once again. She wandered about in the dark for several long minutes before she heard Krueger's knives scratching on the pipes. She screwed up her courage and walked on.  
  
"Come on Freddy," she said. "I'm tired of this. I'm tired of never sleeping, never dreaming. If I had to choose between that and dying.Just come kill me already."  
  
"All right," Freddy laughed.  
  
Sandra was suddenly struck to the floor by a powerful blow to the side of her head. She rolled onto her back as Freddy came down on top of her. He knelt straddling her stomach and raised his claws for the kill. Sandra grabbed his arms and started trying to hold his blades back.  
  
"Die, bitch!" Freddy yelled.  
  
Suddenly, a harsh blaring sound filled the room. It resonated off the pipes and assaulted both Freddy and Sandra's ears. The next thing they knew, they were in the same position only on a bed in Sandra's room.  
  
"Go to Hell, Freddy," Shawn said. He cocked the shotgun and unloaded both barrels into Krueger's chest. The blast threw him off Sandra and crashing through the thin closet door. Shawn stepped around the bed and delivered the other two shells into Freddy's head.  
  
Sandra sat up and grabbed both Christa and Shawn in a relieved embrace. It was over. It was finally over. They'd done it. They'd brought and end to Freddy Krueger once and for all.  
  
"Excuse me," a cold voice said behind them. "You don't seem to be awake yet." Sandra, Christa, and Shawn all looked up to see Freddy standing before them, seemingly uninjured.  
  
"How-" Christa started but never got to finish. A quick slash from Freddy's knives silenced her forever.  
  
Sandra and Shawn scrambled across the bed and up against the wall. Shawn reloaded the shotgun and fired at Krueger again. This time, the monster simply sidestepped the blast and drove his claws into Shawn's chest and out his back. Shawn's body fell to the floor, and Sandra retreated to a corner. Freddy loomed over her.  
  
"Time to die, bitch," Freddy crowed.  
  
Suddenly, Sandra's body started convulsing and shifting. The next thing Freddy knew he was no longer facing a terrified teenaged girl, but a full grown man in a black suit.  
  
"What the hell," Krueger said. "I'm the one who does the weird-ass shit. Who do you think you are?"  
  
"Erickson, Agent Erickson," the man in black replied.  
  
"Well, whoever you are," Freddy sneered, "you're one of my children now!"  
  
***To be continued. 


	2. The Nightmare Continues

A Nightmare in the Matrix Part II  
  
By Andrew Ohning  
  
Based on characters created by Wes Craven and the Wachowski Brothers  
  
***The Next Morning in the Real World  
  
"I'm ready," said Zagan.  
  
The crew of the Amenhotep had picked up on an unusual concentration of Agents in the vicinity of a town called Springville in the Matrix. Late the previous night, a strange sort of bubble appeared. The bubble seemed to easily allow things in, but nothing came back out. Zagan and Boreas were being sent into the Matrix to investigate. Maegera, the Amenhotep's captain plugged her crew members in and loaded their minds into the computer-generated dreamworld of the Matrix.  
  
Zagan opened his eyes in the Matrix, finding himself in an empty room. He quickly picked up the ringing phone and confirmed that he and Boreas was in. They made their way silently out of the house and out onto the street. What they saw there was beyond bizarre. Almost half of the street they were on was enveloped by a hazy blackness of some kind. Zagan pulled out his phone.  
  
"Operator," Moloch said.  
  
"Are you reading this thing?" Zagan said.  
  
"Just the same as we did before," Moloch replied, "nothing coming out of it."  
  
"Right. I'll check back in if we find out something new."  
  
"All right." Moloch's end of the line clicked off.  
  
"So what do we do now?" asked Boreas.  
  
It didn't take long for Zagan and Boreas to figure out that there was no one in the town. After searching the area, they returned to the void which had grown a noticeable amount larger. Suddenly, Zagan's phone rang.  
  
"What is it?" Zagan answered.  
  
"I'm picking up multiple Agents headed your way," Moloch said.  
  
"How many?"  
  
"At least twenty."  
  
"Twenty Agents for two of us? Don't you think that's a little overboard?"  
  
"Twenty Agents!?" said Boreas.  
  
"I don't thing they're coming for you two," Moloch said. "They're probably there to investi- Oh shit, they're only a block away from you! Get out of there!" Zagan and Boreas sprinted behind a tall hedge. A school bus pulled up on the street near the void, and twenty Agents filed out. They stood outside the void for a while and then started walking in, one after the other.  
  
"Whatever's going on inside that void certainly has them worried," Boreas said. Zagan was about to agree when a chilling laughter echoed from within the void. As he and Boreas watched, they saw the forms of several Agents attempting to escape the void. The black mist swirled more densely around them and pulled them back in. All of a sudden, the void began to expand rapidly. Not a word was needed. Zagan and Boreas ran.  
  
"Shit," Boreas shouted as she tripped on a discarded skateboard. As she struggled to get up, the void gained considerable ground on her.  
  
"Run, Boreas!" Zagan shouted.  
  
Boreas limped along as fast as she could, but the void was catching up to her. As Zagan turned to try and assist her, her injured ankle gave out under her and she fell again. The void came to a halt at the middle of her calves. Boreas pushed up on her hands and knees but began slowly sliding into the void.  
  
"No!" she cried.  
  
Zagan rushed over and grabbed her arms. He pulled with every ounce of enhanced strength he could muster, but it was no use. Boreas was gradually being sucked into the void.  
  
"Please don't let me go," Boreas pleaded.  
  
"I won't," Zagan said. He pulled her arms harder. Tears began to trickle down Boreas's face.  
  
"It hurts," she muttered.  
  
Suddenly, a shadowy form of a man emerged from the edge of the void. It loomed right up into Zagan's face.  
  
"She's mine now!" it shouted, shoving Zagan away.  
  
"No!" he cried. "Boreas!"  
  
The shadow wrapped around Boreas and pulled her all the way inside the void. Zagan could hear her screams fading away. The phone rang.  
  
"What the fuck just happened to Boreas?" Moloch said.  
  
"I don't know," Zagan said. "The void expanded, and something pulled her in."  
  
"That's it, I'm patching you an exit. Get the hell out-"  
  
"No. I won't leave her behind." Zagan closed the phone and charged into the void.  
  
Boreas found herself in a dark boiler room. The building stank of rusting metal and another metallic scent. For a moment she couldn't place the smell, but it came to her. Blood. A fiendish laughter resounded throughout the pipe-cluttered room. It was followed by the sound of metal scraping against metal.  
  
"The little girls were always my favorites," said the same voice she'd heard laughing. Boreas whirled around to see a man in a faded red and green sweater standing behind her. He wore a tattered brown fedora atop his horrendously burn-scarred face and a set of knives on his right glove.  
  
"Time to die, little girl," the man growled. He rushed at her.  
  
Boreas jumped up and delivered a roundhouse kick to the man's head. He was sent sprawling on the floor. In an instant he was back on his feet. Boreas flipped over him and planted a hard kick to the small of his back. He crashed into a wall, and was suddenly facing back toward her.  
  
"One, two," he said as he advanced, "Freddy's coming for you!" He lunged at Boreas who easily evaded the strike. "Three, four, better lock your door!" He appeared suddenly behind Boreas. Again she dodged his attack. His knives ended up only slashing her coat. "Five, six," he said before sinking rapidly into the floor, "grab a crucifix!"  
  
Now the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. "Seven, eight, learn to stay up late!" Boreas was trying to be ready for an attack from any direction. "Nine, ten," the fiend erupted from a wall high above her. He came down, knives outstretched. Boreas threw herself backwards, planted her hands on the floor, and spun her legs to kick the descending monster across the room. Before he even realized what had happened, Boreas was on him, pummeling his chest and abdomen with a flurry of kicks.  
  
Suddenly, the fiend grabbed one of Boreas's feet and slashed her thigh with his knives. She let out a shriek of pain and fell to the floor. No sooner than her back hit the ground, the thing was on her.  
  
"As I was saying," he growled, "nine, ten, never sleep again!" His knives flashed, cutting open her throat.  
  
"Boreas!" Zagan's voice cried. She tried to call out to him, but she was already dead.  
  
Boreas was dead, and Zagan ran like mad. He could still hear the.whatever- the-hell-it-was cackling in the distance behind him. Every shadow around him seemed to take on the form of the fiend's clawed hand. Such surreal things kept happening that Zagan began to wonder if this was perhaps some new kind of Upgrade.As he rounded the corner at the end of the street, he glanced absently up at the street sign. The sight stopped him in his tracks. Somehow he was back at the other end of the street.  
  
"Hell no," he said under his breath. He pulled his phone out and dialed his operator. The line clicked as the other end was picked up. "Moloch, get me the hell out of-"  
  
"There is no 'out' anymore," crowed the voice of the whatever-the-hell-it- was over the line.  
  
Zagan threw the phone aside and started to run again. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that the phone was melting into the pavement. From the puddle of black rose the whatever-the-hell-it-was, laughing. Zagan turned back and suddenly found himself inside a house.  
  
"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted.  
  
"I'll tell you," the fiend's voice growled behind him. Zagan turned around to stare straight into the wild green eyes of the monster's burn-scarred face. "You're one of my children now."  
  
There was a flash of light on metal and a tearing pain in Zagan's chest, and then there was nothing.  
  
***The Next Day  
  
"The void is growing bigger by the minute," Maegera said. She was briefing the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar on the situation that had recently arisen in the Matrix. "We first started watching the area when we noticed several Agents being sent there."  
  
"So far," Moloch said, "nothing that goes into the void has come out. It's as if the area is being cut off from the rest of the Matrix."  
  
Morpheus, Trinity, Neo, and Tank all watched the code screens, noticing the blackout bubble Maegera was referring to as the void.  
  
"Any idea what's causing it?" Morpheus asked.  
  
"None. But whatever's going on in there, the things that happen in the void are even more real than in the rest of the Matrix," Maegera said. She led them into another room in the ship where two bodies lay under shrouds. "I'll warn you, this is very strange." Maegera lifted the shroud. The sight took the others aback. Zagan's chest had four deep gashes in it. It looked like someone had taken a quartet of knives to him. The other shroud was lifted to reveal Boreas with her thigh and throat cut.  
  
"What could have done this?" Trinity said.  
  
"This happened to them in that void?" asked Tank.  
  
Moloch nodded.  
  
Neo and Morpheus were speechless.  
  
"The more alarming thing," Maegera continued, "is that the void is not only growing bigger, but faster as well. At the time Zagan was killed, the void only encompassed the street where it started. Now, it has consumed the whole town."  
  
"By our calculations, the void will overtake all of the Matrix in less than forty-eight hours," said Moloch.  
  
***Meanwhile in the Matrix  
  
Agents Reinhart, McCoy, and Roberts stood outside the void. Roberts and McCoy looked to Reinhart for what to do next. So far, none of the Agents that had been sent into the void had returned. Reinhart intended to change that. He nodded to the other Agents, and they walked through into the void. It was daytime in the Matrix, but it was somehow night in here. As the Agents walked along the dark streets, they noticed a trio of girls in white dresses jumping rope.  
  
"One, two, Freddy's coming for you," they sang as two of the girls twirled the rope for the third. Reinhart and the others ignored them as they searched for the source of the error. So far, none of the three hundred Agents sent to investigate had made any contact since entering the void. Reinhart and his team here highly specialized Upgrades. They would not fail.  
  
The Agents found what appeared to be a human standing beside a flickering streetlight. He was dressed in a striped sweater and a hat. He also wore a set of knives on the fingers of his right hand. He laughed as the Agents approached.  
  
"This is it," said McCoy. "He is the source of the error."  
  
"He does not identify as any known program in the Matrix," Roberts added.  
  
"If that is the case, then he is-"  
  
"Only human," Reinhart said.  
  
The Agents all attacked at once. Reinhart lunged forward with a punch strong enough to penetrate steel. McCoy and Roberts each brought a kick whistling through the air toward the human. They didn't realize that the human was gone until their attacks followed through without touching a thing.  
  
"Only human am I?" the human's voice said. McCoy's head was severed before any of the Agents had time to look toward the voice.  
  
Reinhart and Roberts attacked. The human ducked underneath Reinhart's kick and extended his arm toward Roberts. Suddenly, his entire arm stretched as if made of rubber to impale Roberts with the knives. Now, only Reinhart remained. The Agent was confused. How could this thing be human? If it was human, how could it be doing these things? Before Reinhart had any more time to ponder this, he was speared by the very streetlight they'd spotted the human under. 


End file.
